Incineration of liquid waste materials particularly undesirable hydrocarbons, is well known in industry today. Use of incineration in disposing of obnoxious and/or hazardous liquid wastes is greatly increased due to required compliance with recently adopted laws protecting the environment from storage and/or dumping of these materials. Environmental protection laws further require close control of amounts of undesirable chemicals and/or hydrocarbons discharged into the atmosphere, hence there is substantial need for waste fluid incinerators which can achieve zero or very low amounts of the undesirable waste material in exhaust emissions.
Typical presently used fluid incinerators are disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,834,855, 3,861,330, and 4,372,226. These units, while dealing with the process of waste fluid disposal through combustion and/or incineration, do not provide controllable means for ensuring that the incinerated waste fluid is completely eliminated from stack emissions.
Waste fluids typically include combustible hydrocarbons and other chemicals. An additional and more difficult incineration problem is presented by water soluble waste compounds, since the concentration of the chemicals and the characteristics of the water carrier substantially alter any associated combustion process.
In order to successfully incinerate water soluble wastes, applicant has discovered that establishing a peripherally adjacent blanket combustion system wherein a curtain of liquid waste is injected adjacent to combusting fuel provides a means for controlling residence time and temperature within the incinerator combustion chamber, thereby ensuring complete breakdown of the undesirable chemicals contained in order to meet emission standards established by law.
Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide a waste fluid incinerator having controlled combustion processes thereby minimizing quantities of the objectionable hydrocarbon and nitrogen oxide (NOX) contained in gaseous atmospheric emissions from the incinerator.
It is an additional object of this invention to provide a waste fluid incinerator which ensures essentially complete breakdown or destruction of the undesirable component including those dissolved in liquid water.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a waste fluid incinerator having a combustor design which injects waste fluid intermediate the combustion envelopes of liquid and gaseous fuels.
It is an additional object of this invention to provide a waste fluid incinerator having a blanket combustion system wherein the residence time and temperature of combustion gases are controlled to achieve predetermined emissions.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a waste fluid incinerator having a combustion system which reduces quantities of the undesirable fluids in the incinerator exhaust thereby meeting legislated emission standards, and at the same time, recovering substantial amounts of heat from said exhaust gases.